Texas Has Always Been a Great Setting for the Apocalypse | Hacker News Reader

Texas Has Always Been a Great Setting for the Apocalypse

texasmonthly.com

117 pointsdrdee96 comments

> But there was only one moment that really ruptured my suspension of disbelief while reading this whole gonzo book: a scene in which a character from “the autonomous city of Austin” remembers pushing his way onto that city’s subway. Obviously, one can accept that Austin would become a separatist people’s republic within a fractured Texas. But the idea of the “Austin Metro” operating there, even fifty years from now?

Context for non-Texans: Capital Metro is the name of Austin's public transit system, and the current plans for our passenger rail network include at least one large underground station ([0], [1]), so I think this comment is tongue-in-cheek. It's a relatively small component of a relatively small system compared to the iconic subways in other cities, but from a local perspective, a lot of people are having a bit of a "whoah I can't believe this is happening here" reaction, and I think that's what she is referencing.

[0] https://communityimpact.com/austin/central-austin/transporta... [1] https://www.fox7austin.com/news/capital-metro-subway-tunnel-...

There's also the fact that there's only about six inches of dirt here, dig any deeper than that and you hit solid limestone. That's why none of the houses here have basements.

Uh you have that backwards. Limestone is rock, but it’s an easy one to carve through (unlike Manhattan Schist, for example).

It also has an advantage over soil that the remaining bits don’t need much extra support for the load above. This doc talks about it: https://stateimpact.npr.org/texas/2012/11/21/why-texas-doesn...

It also has a disadvantage in that it's extremely porous and allows water to seep through it, which expands and contracts with temperature changes and causes the limestone to crack. There's areas around town where roads have been cut through hills, and if you drive through these after a big rainfall you can literally see water pouring out the side of the rock face. Chunks of limestone breaking off and falling onto the side of the road is a pretty regular occurrence.

There's other issues, too, such as the lake that runs through the middle of the city, the underground rivers and cave networks in the area, and the unstable clay on the East side of town that expands and contracts with rain, causing all sorts of problems.

Do you actually have any sources or are you just making assumptions based on how you see limestone behave on the surface?

I don’t have sources myself but to me the porous nature of limestone seems like a benefit since water would easily flow to the water table instead of flooding in the tunnel.

Erosion seems like it would be a far bigger problem for tunnels in soil or sand than it would be for limestone.

Water generally flows down. If you have a high water table building basements is usually foolish.

Limestone, because it dissolves in contact with acidic water (and rainwater is slightly acidic) is also prone to sinkholes. Best to keep the ground stable by not exposing it to more water. It happens so often in Florida there’s an FAQ page. https://floridadep.gov/fgs/sinkholes

there is no one reason why we dont have basements, but it is more likely to do with the fact that up north they have to dig deep (3-4 ft) for the frost line. If you are digging that deep anyway, you might as well go an additional 4-5 ft and build a basement.

Excavating limestone isnt that hard. Instead of one day to dig a basement in soil, it would take about 14 days to dig a typical basement in limestone (based on digging pools in limestone). It costs about 1500/day for the crew/equipment so an extra 21K for the excavation.

East austin has no limestone and basements are still rare.

> there is no one reason why we dont have basements, but it is more likely to do with the fact that up north they have to dig deep (3-4 ft) for the frost line. If you are digging that deep anyway, you might as well go an additional 4-5 ft and build a basement.

In Minnesota, where I live, basements are definitely a byproduct of structural requirements. You have to dig 48 inches so that your foundation is under the frost line. But also consider that you don't want your front door to be at ground level, because then it might not open after a massive snowfall. So if you add up all that vertical space, you get about 7 feet, which is about the ceiling height of an unfinished basement.

It might not be 'that hard' to excavate limestone, but an additional 21,000 dollars added to the cost along with 14x longer work time is not an insignificant difference.

East Austin doesn't have them because of the unstable clay that expands and contracts with rains, same reason the track surface at COTA has had so many issues. The ground doesn't stay put.

Couple those things with the frost line issue you mentioned, along with the likelihood of flooding, and it probably comes down to the fact that it's just too much work to be worth it.

The reason you don't have basements is because you don't have to worry about the Frontline.

If you did, land would be worth $21k less per lot - to make up for the cost to dig a basement.

> East Austin doesn't have them because of the unstable clay that expands and contracts with rains

Which is why most people water their foundations to ensure the soild maintains steady state of dampness- rain or shine.

East Austinite since I was a teenager, family has had the same parcel of land since the 1880s. It's all caliche and limestone boss 6 inches down boss.

How do you put down fence posts? A brief googling says they should be 36 inches deep.

Depends. Some combine the fence posts with concrete (adding weight), some add reinforcing metal posts, some do nothing. Watching fences collapse after a strong wind storm is a common sight.

Its worth noting you can generally still drill a hole into caliche.

I use an 8 foot, iron digging bar ahead of the post hole digger.

It may be different in Hill Country but in Dallas and Houston the water table is just too high in most places to make a basement realistic.

There are basements here in Houston but they're rare and typically have multiple sumps and pumps.

Alternatively its roughly 3 days of work to drill, blast & dig out a basement excavation, but explosives are scary so such work is often blocked outright.

That may be true in some areas of Austin, but in most cases, it's about cost and expectations. Austin straddles the border between dry, rocky west Texas and wetter, black soil east Texas, but houses have traditionally been built without basements no matter what kind of soil they were built on, in Austin and in other parts of Texas. These days, a lot of newer, more expensive houses are built with basements to maximize usable square footage.

Houses used to be small, built of wood, and hardly attached to the ground at all. It was fairly common practice to pick up a house and move it to another plot nearby.

I think once cities get older and more ossified in their shape is when basements start to appear.

Assuming there is no other reason to avoid it like flooding, hard rock, earthquakes, etc.

> It was fairly common practice to pick up a house and move it to another plot nearby.

To me that sounded fishy but I looked it up and you seem to be right! https://www.brownstonedetectives.com/the-ancient-art-of-movi...

Yeah no kidding, when I had a tree planted in my front yard they had to use jackhammers to make the hole deep enough. I had no idea.

> But the idea of the “Austin Metro” operating there, even fifty years from now?

Might be worth sharing that in 2020 Austin voters approved via ballot referendum (58% to 42%) what's likely to be the largest expansion of public transit this decade. It authorized $7.1 billion in initial bond funds and established a dedicated sales tax to establish ongoing funding for 4 light rail lines, 1 subway, a dedicated BRT system, and a complete transformation of their public transit system.

https://projectconnect.com/

The initial phase itself is already deep into the design and bid stage, groundbreaking should happen in the next couple years.

https://projectconnect.com/docs/librariesprovider2/maps/pcon...

Even the state government of Texas gave its permission to tunnel under a portion of what is state-owned land for the subway for a 99-year annual lease of $1, which some Austin advocates originally feared would be leverage that the state legislature would try to use to hold up the project.

My theory about what turned the tide in favor of local support for transit is that business organizations were loud and clear about broadcasting the message, "We need this for Austin to be competitive." More than 42% of voters here have a distaste for density, public transit, and urban living in general, but a significant number of them were swayed to vote for the plan, and I think it was because of this pro-business message. These are folks who dislike cities but live in the suburbs and make their living from the urban economy, and they were willing to set aside their distaste and vote for transit. Like I said, it's just my personal theory, but I was impressed with how vocal the business community was before the vote.

> These are folks who dislike cities but live in the suburbs and make their living from the urban economy, and they were willing to set aside their distaste and vote for transit

The vote for the plan was purely within Austin city limits. The plan was not at all voted for by suburbanites, nor are they paid for by the suburbs (except for purchases those suburbanites make in Austin proper, generating sales tax revenue).

> More than 42% of voters here have a distaste for density, public transit, and urban living in general

Source, please? Because I doubt it. Austin has one of the most pro-urbanist city councils in Texas, and has densified at a rate most other cities have not over the past 20 years (and second only to Dallas and Houston in terms of nationwide growth). I'm a Texan myself, born and raised, and it's a completely different built environment than what it was even 10 years ago, and that's not by accident, but actual policy supported by voters. Skyscrapers, density, apartments, townhomes, rezonings in previous single-family-only enclaves – things California talks about in studies and papers and committees, Texas is actually doing (I've lived in Los Angeles for over 5 years now, and the sentiment here is much more anti-development than I see in Austin and Dallas, which is generally pro-build-it-and-they-will-come).

The city limits include a lot of area that I consider suburbs, such as the area around Circle C in the southwest, the areas close to Cedar Park in the northwest, anything west of 360, etc.

> Austin has one of the most pro-urbanist city councils in Texas

Setting aside the fact that "in Texas" is one hell of a qualification to that statement, the voters haven't been helpful in allowing growth to happen. They just haven't been given the opportunity to stop it. CodeNEXT got a majority in the council, but it would have been crushed if it had been put in front of voters.

I think the influx of pro-density residents into central Austin is changing things really fast, though.

> "in Texas" is one hell of a qualification to that statement

I think you're mistaken, or (very understandbly!) applying Texas's social conservatism to their land policies, which are likely some of the most liberal in the nation.

As someone who grew up in a real estate family "in Texas" – it's probably one of the most "pro-development" states in the country. Sure, historically that development hasn't been "urban", but as the market heads that direction the development has adapted.

Texas cities have been very amenable to building density (Houston doesn't even have any zoning or density/height limits whatsoever!), it's just that in the past there wasn't the population density to justify it when you could spread ever outward. What we've seen in the past decade is a shift to the cities, and cities like Dallas/Houston/Austin have drastically increased density (I've seen entire single family blocks turned into mid-rise apartments in my neighborhood alone), no rezonings necessary.

Dallas and Houston _each_ built more homes last year than the _entirety of the state of California_, and routinely have been doing so since 2010. Here's one from 2014, but you can find articles from 2021 and 2020 with a cursory google search, too.

https://houston.culturemap.com/news/real-estate/04-02-14-boo...

In 2017, Austin/Dallas/Houston issued about 10% of nationwide housing construction permits that year. That's crazy!

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-16/texas-lea...

For better or worse, Texas also has an aversion to process and paperwork that seems to plague other cities' planning departments – getting a by-right ADU permitted in California, which is the law of the land, took me over a year in Los Angeles. In Dallas, it required council approval for a zoning exemption, but the process took 2 weeks total.

I frankly do not really understand where this idea that Texas is against development is coming from -- the sentiment for "more more more" has existed since the oil boom in the 80s. Houston and Dallas both have grand ambitions of being the Manhattan of the South. Maybe it's the coastal people from much more NIMBY cities moving in?

> Dallas and Houston _each_ built more homes last year than the _entirety of the state of California_, and routinely have been doing so since 2010. Here's one from 2014, but you can find articles from 2021 and 2020 with a cursory google search, too.

Are the ones from 2020 and 2021 also just straight-out lying? The 2014 one you link both claims Houston to be higher than CA as a whole (without providing numbers for current Houston starts or CA starts) and claims that the rate in Houston is expected to peak at around 50k starts/year a couple years later in 2016.

But, in 2014, single and multifamily starts in California were each already around 50k, and growing.

https://journal.firsttuesday.us/the-rising-trend-in-californ...

Austin Metro?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austin_Metro

Apocalypse stories don’t often make sense. The energy and fuel situations are usually bonkers. The hordes of people who turn into lunatics is silly. Cooperation is natural and good.

My favorite post apocalyptic cult is the one featured in A Quiet Place 2. This world features aliens that will kill anyone who makes a sound. The protagonists are captured by this cult of like 30 people with little intro to who the hell they are. They do this strongman creepy virtue signaling for a while and then tie up Jim’s replacement with some noisy chains on a dock. Surprise surprise, Not Jim makes a noise (not with the chains for some reason), and sure enough the entire cult is immediately wiped out.

…

How did these people canonically survive for so long doing these dumbass shenanigans?

> Cooperation is natural and good.

Recently, after seeing people from Dallas haul their trailers to my small Texas town's grocery store so as to pillage our remaining toilet paper stock, my faith in the rational ability of my fellow Man has been somewhat reduced.

My take is that local cooperation is natural and good. But, the roving bands of marauders will absolutely be a thing in an apocalypse scenario.

We had TP when no one in our state had it locally, because people didn't lose their minds. Then people found out and drove here. The day I saw a literal armed guard for a pallet of toilet paper was the day I realized that in a true SHTF scenario, there is nothing you can do. If you live within 4 or 5 hours of a road, you will be inundated with refugees/robbers/marauders. It will happen, I am convinced.

As dark as this is, I believe the best thing you can do is plan a safe and painless exit for you and yours when things get really bad.

The first time people got into literal fist fights in supermarkets over toilet paper, my faith in the rational ability of most humans was shaken. The third time around, it was gone. By now my expectations of humans are, sadly, extremely limited.

All the while the grocery store essential items are being procured, packed and supplied to your town in the middle of a global pandemic. Getting freshly grown produce, dairy and meat in the middle of apocalypse level panic?

I envy world view of people like yours. I wish I had that level of self-entitlement. I truly do!

Do you really think that the “most humans” I’m referring to are the same ones responsible for that still-functional-despite-The-Circumstances supply chain? Those humans are too busy to fight over toilet paper in the aisles, and too competent to run completely out of it in the first place.

Hmm I'm bothered by people hauling trailers to horde toilet paper, sure.

But I'd absolutely fight you for the last roll on the shelf.

I would wipe my ass with my own hand before I'd engage in any kind of violence over fucking toilet paper. It's absurdly stupid and ethically bankrupt.

Violence against another human being should be a last resort for self defense only.

> I would wipe my ass with my own hand

That's probably not the best of ideas, however the toilet paper frenzy is indeed extremely strange. If it was that crucial, humanity would collectively explode from all the stuff they could not push out of their asses before toilet paper was invented. Many times over. And it would stink to hell and back, too.

> Violence against another human being should be a last resort for self defense only.

Idk, or boredom. I hope you don't assume the average fuck on the street has 1/100th the sense of honor you do.

you say that from the comfort of your own fully stocked home. When your child is starving your perspective will likely change. Even if it doesnt, other people will be coming for you.

If a group attacks other people, someone has to band together to step up to stop them before they come for each individual.

The thread is about toilet paper, not food.

It's a perfectly understandable reaction for lack of food and water. It's absurd for toilet paper. But if you look hard enough, you will find people doing the same for Playstations, so it shouldn't be that surprising.

(What does the US people have with toilet paper anyway? It seems to always enter the discourse of survivalists and other kinds of apocalipse dreamers, and anything that happens, it seems to disappear there. It's different on most of the world.)

Y'all need some bidets...

Finally someone lays down the facts.

How many people? What fraction of Dallas residents engaged in that behavior?

That said, would it have been "Texan" to have turned them back at the city limits?

> The hordes of people who turn into lunatics is silly.

The hordes of lunatics already exist, and are just waiting for something to happen.

Sure sure. But they either die or fall in line very quickly. Fiction always makes these out to seem like very powerful entities.

AtR isn't so much a post-apocalypse in the usual total-collapse-of-civilization sense. It's post collapse of the US government really so technology, trade, and some infrastructure still exist. There's still a relatively strong remnant of the US around but they only hold sway in the north east and [0] some across Ohio extending as far as Missouri.

As for cooperation there's a lot of that going on throughout Texas but there's also groups with very different ideas about what a good nation would look like and some are willing to use force to bring their ideas into being. That ultimately feels quite realistic to me. Pockets of cooperation that have to defend themselves from uncooperative elements.

[0] partially fan made map with some comments by the author clearing up things that were only mentioned briefly in the book: https://www.reddit.com/r/behindthebastards/comments/oevzgd/a...

you can look at modern apocalypses to see what might happen;

in rwanda hundreds of thousands of people were murdered in ethnic violence https://www.un.org/africarenewal/web-features/i-was-tested-l...

in aleppo, blocks banded together, but there was starvation, robbery, murder, rape etc

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/21/three-years-af...

hurricane katrina superdome - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/sep/06/hurricanekatri...

venezuela https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/17/world/america...

> Cooperation is natural and good.

I agree, but perhaps hard fought. "The Survivors", the 1975 TV series from the U.K. tried to do apocalypse more cleverly.

How so?

Scanned the Wikipedia page for it and nothing popped out as notably clever:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivors_(1975_TV_series)

Actually depicted people trying to organize and cooperate, rebuild rather than running nitrous-fueled cars to trade petrol with the Bullet Lord or whatever. (I like those films too though.)

I don't know if I'd describe it's take as 'notably clever' but the focus wasn't on hordes of zombies / insane cults / etc but groups of people coming together and trying hard to rebuild some sort of life after a massive epidemic that kills most people. There were clashes between different groups, some resolved amicably, some with violence.

Pretty good actually, a Terry Nation show as I recall (the guy who invented the Daleks). Attempts to take the subject seriously and realistically (no zombies or daleks), with reasonable success.

Like in Waterworld, where did they get all those cigarettes? Who's growing all that tobacco?

Nick Naylor: Cigarettes in space?

Jeff Megall: It's the final frontier, Nick.

Nick Naylor: But wouldn't they blow up in an all oxygen environment?

Jeff Megall: Probably. But it's an easy fix. One line of dialogue. 'Thank God we invented the... you know, whatever device.'

"SHTF Survival Stories", despite it's sketch title and cover art, follows some of the Balkans war.

People do cooperate.. just not in the ways you might want.

A horde of lunatics stormed the capitol, some wearing outrageous outfits with names like "Q Shaman"

We all know the true best setting - Vegas

Nothing like half built buildings, a dry lake, army bases and desert all around, and mindless zombies roaming downtown to make for an apocalyptic setting.

And then i realized this was a work of fiction

Just come to Birmingham in the UK. No need for any set building or CGI

Birmingham is surprisingly versatile as a filming location. The dystopian scenes in “Ready Player One” were shot there, but it can also double for up-market London housing as seen in the “Kingsman” movies.

Britain has always worn its class divisions on its sleeves.

It may be of note that the recent "The Batman" was largely filmed in the UK and specifically liverpool

This fact is very dystopic in itself.

Birmingham, city of the future: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoHVO1eSMFc "Telly Savalas Looks At Birmingham", 5m, 1981. Note the use of shots of complicated motorway junctions to indicate modernity.

For reference, the everlasting beauty of Spaghetti Junction [1]

1.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti_Junction,_Birmingham

Surprisingly green for so much concrete.

More trees than Paris and more canals than Venice

This could easily pass as parody, at this point I'm not sure if it isn't. Hilarious in any case.

The fun bit about that is that most of the "state of the art" modern stuff like the railway station and shopping centres has been demolished and replaced since

Not sure Birmingham looks that post-apocalyptic despite its reputation, although the starchitecture of the Bull Ring centre that replaced the Bull Ring centre in the video has a definite aliens-have-invaded vibe to it... e.g https://i2-prod.birminghammail.co.uk/incoming/article1992671...

I would say in every city with more than 2 millions inhabitants there will be at least one location that looks "apoliptically".

This happens for many reasons: abandoned industrial areas, location that came out of fashion, people moving to cheaper places, etc.

Heh - the Netflix zombie series "Black Summer" was filmed in "North East" Calgary, Alberta Canada.

The running joke was that because the "North East" was a fairly rough/work traditional working-class area, they didn't have to do much "set dressing".

Can you expand on this? I have visited Birmingham many times so curious why you think it's a good setting.

Richness of history. As other comments say, it's a versatile slice of an ex-industrial heartland. Some bits are Tudor (Shakespeare lived up the road in Stratford), Then it was a powerhouse right through the industrial revolution, well connected by canals and rail (technically Birmingham would make a great New Green Capital when the sea reclaims London). Then Hitler dropped several Hiroshima's worth of bombs on Britain in a WW2 campaign we called "The Blitz". A lot of that fell on Coventry and Birmingham causing millions of pounds of improvements :) So it became a testing ground for new and innovative architecture, some of which was the Brutalist concrete of the late 50s and 60s. That looked great and "modern" at the time, and now looks a perfect "dystopian" setting. Last time I visited that was being bulldozed, but preservation orders actually protect some of the "ugliest" skyline, because that's part of our culture now. So, if you're looking to make a dark post-industrial apocalypse move, come check out Birmingham.

Birmingham Alabama is probably a better choice. Lots of burnt out structures that never got cleaned up, and the people apparently can't afford trash service there so they just leave it on the sidewalk until it eventually piles up over your head. Hotels are filthy too. Garbage and used needles inside the elevators -- and this was a nice hotel.

Slightly disappointed in this being fiction. There are a few different religions that focus on end times that have decided that Texas actually will be a safe haven for biblical apocalypse. Based on the post's title alone, I was hoping this might be a deep dive into these groups or something similar.

"...rich vein of speculative fiction that considers Texas as its own republic."

Texas seems most self-satisfied when waxing secessionist.

Being self-satisfied when telling others to leave you alone (get bent, get out, piss off, etc.) is quintessentially American. Texas is to America as America is to the world. It is a difference of magnitude, not direction, and Texas has this particular topic to conveniently funnel all that extra "screw you" energy into.

I see your point, but I don't agree.

Don't tread on me/independence are broad American values. "Screw Federal overreach" is a common American sentiment in many US states.

Texas Monthly echoed appreciation for a broadly acknowledged Texas-as-nation-state fantasy. This is different in direction than any other US state and feels troubling.

state independence or secession is routinely brought up in relation to california, idaho, and the PNW, at the very least. it has also been a constant since texas was accepted into the union. spare me the handwringing, americans are disagreeable.

There isn't a regular drumbeat of secession from the state's own politicians and political groupies in those other places, and in California when it is discussed it's a worst-case scenario to protect ourselves, not an isolationist fever dream. There was a Russian-sponsored "CalExit" thing a few years ago, but that wasn't organic. It's in the water in Texas.

edit: spelling

> and in California when it is discussed it's a worst-case scenario to protect ourselves, not an isolationist fever dream.

I am firm, you are obstinate, he is a pig-headed fool.

I am righteously indignant, you are annoyed, he is making a fuss over nothing.

I have reconsidered the matter, you have changed your mind, he has gone back on his word.

It's a fun book and available for free both as an eBook and as an audio book put out as a podcast if your interest is piqued.

https://atrbook.com/download/

https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-after-the-revolution-829...

The same author also put out a really interesting longform podcast piece called "It Could Happen Here", detailing the in-process crumbling of America. It goes into some recent historical examples of countries dissolving/devolving, and outlines (shockingly plausible) ways similar events could occur in the US.

https://www.stitcher.com/show/it-could-happen-here <- click the "Season 1" dropdown to filter down to just the longform stuff.

Yeah, I was listening to that from the beginning and several of his other podcasts.

I have a whole shelf of Texas based sci-fi / apocolypta. My favorite is the slightly non-sensical Texas-Israeli War of 1999.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Texas-Israeli_War:_1999

EDIT: This is what I get for commenting before reading the article. Of course, they call out the above book. Of course...

That sounds like a great classic, someone should turn it into a movie...

Seriously, as a not-so-serious video game it could be a ton of fun!

Robert Evans is an amazingly good journalist, I would recommend any of his work to anyone. Also, he is very funny.

And Behind the Bastards is a hoot to listen to

Thanks for posting this, I'm an Evans fanboy and I would not have seen this otherwise.

Driving through Houston always makes me feel like I'm in Mad Max.

I've always heard Houston was an urban wasteland but when I visited I was surprised at the amount of trees and nice buildings. It was also very clean.

The city center had a really nice large park and the tram that goes across the city looked nice and modern.

Maybe because I wasn't driving through the suburbs, so I missed the ugly parts but otherwise this critique seemed way overrated.

Driving from one edge of the city to the other definitely triggers the feeling in me.

I prefer Raccoon City. I have all my apocalypsi there.

Instead of/in addition to reading about fictional collapse of civilization you can now visit New York, Portland or Los Angeles and see it for real.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nvTgSW2L8Q

https://odysee.com/@rossmanngroup:a/nyc-a-documentary-of-urb...

https://odysee.com/@rossmanngroup:a/why-new-york-city-has-ga...

https://rumble.com/vpc60g-heres-what-downtown-portland-orego...

Not so fun, eh?

From one of your own links:

"Based on news reports, you’d think that the whole city was up in flames and gutted out. But it’s actually just in one small part of downtown that’s about 5 blocks long. "

And here is the really shocking part, if the local government wanted to clean it up and fix the problem, it could but it just does not have the willpower to do do. This is not the Apocalypse, it just local government sucking at its job.

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